


Cross My Heart And Hope To Die

by orphan_account



Category: Lord of the Rings - Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Elves, F/M, Female Characters, Ficlet, Future Fic, POV Female Character, POV Third Person, Past Tense, Songfic, Wordcount: 100-1.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-05-04
Updated: 2003-05-04
Packaged: 2017-10-09 07:15:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/84428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Songfic for the Sentenced song by the same name.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Cross My Heart And Hope To Die

**Author's Note:**

> Songfic for the Sentenced song by the same name.

Fresh wind blowed through the woods, the leaves undulating like waves in the sea. So this is my green sea, though Arwen Undomiel. Only it's not the Undying Lands I'm going to.

A ghost of a smile passed across her lips. Quite the opposite.

The ground and the trees smelled so good. Through the scent her mind filled with memories, more feelings than clear images. Hundreds of thousands of memories of glades were in her past, hundreds of thousands of days, and the smell brought them all back, layered over each other like the folds of her dark dress. She knelt onto the grass, and then lay down, pressed her cheek against the cool wet blades.

A hint of fear passed through her mind, so serene a moment before. She turned on her back and looked up at the foliage above, and she remembered her youth. She cried then, and to her shame, she knew she was crying for herself. "Oh love," she moaned. "Oh love, what you did to me!"

Her children were gone. They lived, but none of them belonged to her anymore, hadn't for decades that seemed longer than centuries to her. She had lived only marginally for hundreds of years, and only the last portion of her life had been at all significant. Her youth began when she fell in love, her education when she married, and her adulthood with the birth of her first child, who was now a stranger behind those eyes that had once looked on her as a creator. The only one who had belonged to her then was her King and Husband, but the prophecy had come true. Before the end, she had lost everything.

Now, then, there was only one thing left to do. To end.

"This is what they meant by the Gift of Men. Oh my love, I had no idea." She gasped with fear, even as she stared unflinching at the foliage. She realized now that the light filtering through the green was the face of her death. That was what the approach of death looked like; lovely, unbarrable, and filled to the brim with memories. "Are you waiting for me? Will you welcome with embraces and kisses?" And she knew the answer: death would come when the memories faded, and then there would be nothing. That would be the final loss. She hadn't lost everything yet; only everything that mattered.

"If I give up my memories too, will it stop hurting?" And she knew the answer to that, too. Yes. Yes.

She closed her eyes. And she smelled autumn in the wind, the same autumn that she had known and seen and lived since that one day in this glade. The evening had fallen. The birds sang less often. The light shining through her eyelids was changing, then fading.

She opened her eyes. Above her, the foliage parted, and she caught a glimpse of a star.

Night fell.


End file.
